sdf's profile

Winner of the Myth America Competition, August 30, 2009

The book, like the others in the Real X series, is published by the National Center for Constitutional Studies and like the others
provides a purified picture of great figures in American history so that their biographies reflect the wholly ideological goals of the
National Center. Long ago, I remember reading books about Marx published in Russian and Hungarian by the Communist Party.
These biographies were about the level of objectivity and historical accuracy that is achieved by the National Center's series: namely,
they were shameless shams that gave the illusion of informing people objectively. But, as with the Communist Party, once you know
who is… Read more

not clear that Paine's common sense is Beck's common sense, August 27, 2009

I find Beck's identification with Paine confusing. For example,
I didn't see in Beck's version of Common Sense the following from Paine's Appendix to Common Sense:

"And here without anger or resentment I bid you farewel. Sincerely wishing, that as men
and Christians, ye may always fully and uninterruptedly enjoy every civil and religious
right; and be, in your turn, the means of securing it to others; but that the example that ye
have unwisely set, of mingling religion with politics, may be disavowed and reprobated by
every inhabitant of AMERICA."

This is from the Signet Edition 2003:68 with an introduction by the excellent… Read more

we need ingersoll, but get a whiner , January 21, 2006

as an avid atheist i found the film itself, as distinguished from the
accompanying commentary, to be enormously disappointing. indeed,
there are so few films which focus on the mystery of devoutly held
groundless beliefs that one can only be more sorely saddened to see
that a topic with such promise becomes a vehicle for the filmmaker
to catalogue his own derisive disillusionment. i knew nothing about
the filmmaker before the film, and felt nothing for him by
the end: he trivializes the complex and dangerously consequential issue of
american christian fundamentalism by personalizing it. there is a
deep difference between using… Read more